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I seem to alternate years of not finding a publisher with years of better luck. My routine is the same with either: write a short story a week (I’ve nearly finished a sequence of 36 stories taking place on successive days); send rejected stories out to another publisher; query agents for a novel; and revise a 3/4 done novel, novella (usually a past year’s National Novel Writing Month project), or first draft of a short story or script — all of which must be kept in continuity with each other.

I used to think when a favorite writer didn’t have anything new that they were either writing a novel or taking time off. Most writers I know work steadily, all the time, and there’s a portion of luck in appears in print/on screens and when. A writer is someone who writes: I keep at it (and all the secretarial work that goes with finding publication) until my luck changes.

The script is set 800 years in the future in a colonized Milky Way galaxy. In this play, historians on an established colony world decide to clone two of their four planetary founders in order to solve the problem of what went wrong in their lives. These clones are raised in strict historical recreations of their 300-years-gone-by North America hometowns and are given the same military training as their originals.

This play is about the day the two young men meet.

They find themselves locked in one room until they solve an unspecified problem about the past. Some things go wrong: historians on this colony planet have only cloned two of the four founding figures; the clones have figured out they are duplicates of famous long-dead men and everyone around them is an actor in a living history museum; and they’re two unique new people – not their original, heroic progenitors.

It is is a story about free will and predestination – what can and cannot be planned. It is about a relationship that do not fit conventional categories and a story that does not follow conventional patterns.

-Lisa Shapter

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Deep background (Or: (Nearly) Everything I Write is in the Same Universe) —

This script is based on an unpublished short story. The play stands on its own, but it is linked to an ongoing series of short stories now appearing in Black Denim Lit. The prequel stories are:

Nearly all of my work is interconnected: each work stands on its own but each piece adds depth and nuance to the others. Those who read this script will know things about these characters that no one else knows. (Readers of the short stories will appreciate the two original characters’ world and why their descendants might have wanted to clone them. There was a draft of the script where the two originals and Rain and Resada had an entire conversation about the world they’d founded (and their worries for the place) but it didn’t end up in the production.)

At the end of the workshop reading and Q&A of my play last November, Alex Pease spoke to me about getting the script ready for production. One of the first things he said was: “Theater is collaborative.”

To honor that truth, let me say that I owe every success of the first production of my science fiction play “The Other Two Men” (review) to the professional acumen and hard work of many, many partners, advisers, and benefactors —

The funny thing about my play “The Other Two Men” (review) is that it’s a story about an arranged marriage – that started out as a kind of arranged marriage. The Players Ring wrote me that Tomer Oz would be my director. Tomer arranged to meet and started right out with the two issues that cause the most conflicts in relationships: money and sex.

As a disciple of Yog’s Law in science fiction circles no other possibility had occurred to me:
“Of course we’re paying theactors!”

We moved on to how he wanted to approach the play. “I’m not so interested in the gay stuff.” He said. I decided to ask what he meant rather than take instant offence. (This is the director who added a kiss and a down-on-one-knee proposal to the staging: he has no problem with same-sex material as a producer, director, or actor.) What he meant was ‘I don’t see this as A Gay Story – this is not a niche production that would only interest an LBGT audience’.

“I agree.” I replied. “In fact you’ve understood all the main themes of the play perfectly. So tell me your ideas for putting this play on stage. How can I help? I’ve typed brief casting notes on 3×5 cards, as a start ….”

We quickly moved on to casting, callbacks, the table read, and a startlingly compact rehearsal schedule. I found it to be wonderful (everyone I’ve worked with at The Players Ring is kind and professional) and very difficult: I had to trust Tomer before I knew or liked him. As producer and director he made every key creative decision, as producer he had say over the production’s budget and finances, and while I quickly had good reasons for trusting him, extending immense confidence to a near-stranger was a hard thing to do. Worse, we grew up on different continents and came from different artistic worlds: so there were two cultural differences that could have created difficulties. (My grandparents were from different continents so I knew that kind of difference well.)

The difference between writing and theater culture was the most difficult part for me – writers (see Yog’s Law) always suspect that publishers are not being above-board with shared creative decisions and finances. Theater is collaborative and each person – stage manager, actor, producer, or light tech is trusted to do their job and work as a team. Tomer explained (as a fellow playwright) that if I believed my script was a finished work then I should trust that a theater could stage it without my guidance or intervention. In fact he did let me sit in on every step of the process, told me his ideas and showed me what he working on, and asked what I thought about each stage of the process (this was a courtesy, not a consultation).
Over rehearsals I quickly discovered that Tomer is an excellent manager; an organized, prompt, on-top-of-the-details boss who is clear without being overbearing. He has a sense of humor, he is flexible (when the lights were stuck on ‘blackout’ one day during Tech Week he had no trouble shifting gears to an equally valuable alternate type of run-through), and he translated my high-concept science fiction (whose ideas about history and predestination he compared to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy (!!)) with lots of strange emotional territory into to-the-point guidance that made immediate sense to our twoleads. He changed much of the play’s stage directions (even after James Patrick Kelly’s advice I had too many of them). (“Well, you’re limiting what I can do as an actor.” Emery Lawrence explained when I asked for his and Bailey Weakley’s feedback on the script.). I had set the play on a traditional proscenium stage with two legs and a border in the wings – the Players’ Ring has a bare, black box3/4 thrust stage with entrances at three corners. Tomer changed the geography of the set and did a beautiful job turning the space between theactors into a metaphor for the two characters’ sorta-romantic relationship.

Tomer’s also … a lot of people talk about tolerance now; what a different, truly egalitarian American society would look like. Without any grandstanding Tomer treated me as a full human being and fellow professional (even when I said, “Look, I don’t know any of the rules around here: you’ll just have to tell me everything about how theater works.”) Every culture I grew up with – whether it was Spanish or Southeastern U.S. – has a role for women (and for men). During rehearsals Tomer had no box I was supposed to stay in. It was very disorienting. I had a job (the playwright) but I was an entire human being. He also did a second thing that I put down to culture: he understood the theme of fundamental human decency in the script with the clarity of noon daylight.

Tomer Oz is a good person to work with and an excellent producer and director. By Tech Week I liked him – after trusting him entirely for three week with one of the most personal things I’ve written.

I knew only two things about Tomer Oz before I met him: I had watched him act in Bengal Tiger (“If you can act like that — and interpret a script like that — then you can direct *this* 45-minute play blindfolded with one hand tied behind your back.” I said to him.) And Alex from the reading had assured me: “He’s great.” (This means a very different thing in L.A.)

Alex Pease, one of the actors from last November’s reading, came on as our alternate light tech. At one point during Tech Week he sat down in the theater seat next to me, and observed:

“This is a hard thing to do, to make the jump from short stories to scripts. It’s also a hard thing to make the jump from publishing to the theater, they’re different cultures. You’ve done both. Normally I don’t allow the author to be a part of the actual production, because oftentimes you feel like you have to consult them with every choice or note, which can suffocate the director. This project is different; you’re one of the few who actually understands these limitations, and from what I can tell you’re one of the most understanding and accommodating playwrights I’ve ever seen. This works.”

I replied: “This has been everything I’m bad at and everything that’s difficult for me. I like Tomer, though, he’s been worth trusting.”

Alex said: “I told you he’d be great to work with – we came into theater at the same time, only a month apart. I’ve worked with him before.”

That’s the other cultural difference between theater and writing: authors will overlook many flaws in collaborators and business partners as long as they’re competent professionals. In this local theater culture the first criteria for hiring someone is ‘are they a decent person’ – everyone already knows who can do their job — but what matters is whether they are difficult, don’t keep their word, or are bad at getting along with people. So they knew all that beforehand about Tomer and I didn’t.

Stirring sci-fi at The Ring

“The Other Two Men” is thought-provoking theater

Modern society’s interpretation of history is never certain. Despite our best attempts to learn from the past, our current resources limit us from experiencing the proper lesson. We try anyway, for as the old saying goes, “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”

A new play on stage at The Players’ Ring in Portsmouth is spinning that popular belief into a reverse concept: If we were to repeat the past, would we learn from it?

In “The Other Two Men,” presented by Oz Productions, this question is explored through the interactions between Saskatoon II (Emery Lawrence) and Nebraska II (Bailey Weakley), clones of two of the four long-dead founding fathers of a future society built upon a colonized Milky Way galaxy. Saskatoon and Nebraska are under observation by their creators, who hope to discover historical intricacies by replicating the lives of the original two founders through their clones. But the controlled nature of their existence causes the clones to question and debate the ethics and value of such an endeavor.

Written by Lisa Shapter and directed by Tomer Oz, the two-man show is great entertainment for fans of the sci-fi genre, particularly those seeking a production with non-traditional plotlines. “The Other Two Men” is attractively unorthodox, a good choice for anyone looking for a different kind of theater experience.

The scenery and detail of the set is refreshingly sparse, allowing the audience to devote all of its attention to the two actors onstage. The spotlight remains on Lawrence and Weakley, who cope with the pressure through a dedicated maintenance of character. Their dialogue is steady and their facial expressions reflect the strong emotions their characters are feeling. The two stars develop and maintain a clear chemistry.

Despite the compatibility of the actors, Nebraska and Saskatoon have conflicting reactions to their circumstances. While Nebraska continually expresses worry and doubt about their situation, Saskatoon is more resigned to his fate and optimistic about the outcome of the experiment. Although this dynamic creates an interesting tension between the two, Saskatoon gets somewhat short-changed as a character, lacking Nebraska’s depth and vulnerability. This results in a slight imbalance in the plot.

The lighting for the production is well done, but some of the sound effects are vague, particularly the source and meaning of the sounds the characters hear in their heads. Furthermore, the narration that accompanies different scenes is often difficult to understand and too brief for the audience to adequately consider.

But the artfulness of the writer and director, the performance of the actors, and the skill of the crew are all on full display in this production. The cast and crew’s ingenuity has created a compelling and thought-provoking show out of scant resources.

Audiences will not easily brush off the effects of “The Other Two Men” once they leave the theater — they will be made to think, and they will be made to feel.

“The Other Two Men” is onstage at The Players’ Ring in Portsmouth through July 24. Show times are Friday and Saturday at 10 p.m. and Sunday at 9 p.m. Tickets are $12, available here.